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Software security and storage specialist Symantec June 7 announced an agreement with IBM to port its Veritas Cluster Server, Veritas Storage Foundation family and NetBackup recovery technology to IBMs Linux on POWER platform, opening a new door to the open-source enterprise storage market.
As a result of this port, Symantecs Data Center Foundation products are now available across all major Linux, Unix and Windows platforms.
Symantecs Veritas Cluster Server, which works in a gridlike manner, aims to reduce application downtime and protect everything from a single database instance to globally dispersed clusters across all major operating systems, a company spokesperson said.
Veritas Storage Foundation software combines two products—Volume Manager and File System—in an attempt to simplify file system management and improve the utilization of a companys storage infrastructure.
Veritas Volume Replicator provides a storage-independent disaster recovery solution when data loss and prolonged downtime cannot be tolerated by replicating data over any IP network, the spokesperson said.
One version of the Storage Foundation software, which was developed expressly for Oracles RAC (Real Application Clusters) systems, also will be ported to run on IBM Linux servers. All the Symantec storage system software will now be optimized to run on the IBM portfolio of System P servers, the spokesperson said.
Because of the emergence of alternative storage system software in recent months, enterprise IT managers are investigating ways to reduce the cost and complexity of their data centers, said Richard Villars, vice president of Storage Systems at IDC, in Framingham, Mass.
Linux systems are a prime focus of that search.
“For those companies that are looking to Linux-based solutions like the Linux on POWER portfolio from IBM as part of these efforts, the ability to use standard storage management solutions like those from Symantec provides the assurance that the addition of Linux will simplify the environment, not make it more complex,” Villars said.
The deal extends the engineering relationship between the two companies that began in April 2000. In addition, IBM will resell Symantecs Veritas Cluster Server and the Veritas Storage Foundation family of products with IBM System P servers for AIX and Linux on POWER in the U.S. federal and Japanese markets.
Symantec offerings for Linux on POWER are expected to be available starting by the end of 2006, the spokesperson said.